The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in the Watts neighborhood and its surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. The riots were motivated by anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department, as well as grievances over employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty in L.A.
On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, was pulled over for drunk driving. After he failed a field sobriety test, officers attempted to arrest him. Marquette resisted arrest, with assistance from his mother, Rena Frye; a physical confrontation ensued in which an officer struck Marquette in the face with a baton. Meanwhile, a crowd of onlookers had gathered. Rumors spread that the police had kicked a pregnant woman who was present at the scene. Six days of riots followed, motivated by allegations of police abuse. Nearly 14,000 members of the California Army National Guard helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in 34 deaths, as well as over $40 million in property damage. It was the most notable protest of police brutality until the riots of 1992.
Background
In the Great Migration of 1915–1940, major populations of African Americans moved to Northeastern and Midwestern cities such as Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City to pursue jobs in newly established manufacturing industries; to cement better educational and social opportunities; and to flee racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, violence and racial bigotry in the Southern states. This wave of migration largely bypassed Los Angeles.
In the 1940s, in the Second Great Migration, black workers and families migrated to the West Coast in large numbers, in response to defense industry recruitment efforts at the start of World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 directing defense contractors not to discriminate in hiring or promotions, opening up new opportunities for minorities. The black population in Los Angeles dramatically rose from approximately 63,700 in 1940 to about 350,000 in 1965, rising from 4% of L.A.'s population to 14%. In the Watts area, the percentage changed from an area of mixed demographics to an area which was over 80% Black.
Residential segregation
Los Angeles had racially restrictive covenants that prevented specific minorities from renting and buying property in certain areas, even long after the courts ruled such practices illegal in 1948 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. At the beginning of the 20th century, Los Angeles was geographically divided by ethnicity, as demographics were being altered by the rapid migration from the Philippines (unincorporated territory of the U.S. at the time) and immigration from Mexico, Japan, Korea, and Southern and Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, the city was already 80% covered by racially restrictive covenants in real estate. By the 1940s, 95% of Los Angeles and Southern California housing was off-limits to certain minorities. Minorities working in L.A.'s defense industries as well as those returning after World War II faced widespread discrimination in housing. They found themselves excluded from the suburbs and restricted to housing in East or South Los Angeles, which includes the Watts neighborhood and Compton. Such real estate practices severely restricted educational and economic opportunities available to the minority community.
Following the US entry into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government removed and interned 70,000 Japanese Americans from Los Angeles, leaving empty spaces in predominantly Japanese-owned areas. This further encouraged the migration of black residents into the city during the Second Great Migration to occupy the vacated spaces, such as Little Tokyo. As a result, housing in South Los Angeles became increasingly scarce, overwhelming the already established communities and providing opportunities for real estate developers. Davenport Builders, for example, was a large developer who responded to the demand, with an eye on undeveloped land in Compton. What was originally a mostly white neighborhood in the 1940s increasingly became a middle-class dream for black people, in which blue-collar laborers could enjoy suburbia away from the slums.
In the post-World War II era, suburbs in the Los Angeles area grew explosively as black residents also wanted to live in what they saw as more peaceful white neighborhoods. In a thinly veiled attempt to avoid sharing their neighborhoods with black residents, which existing white residents saw as a threat to their general peace and prosperity, most of these suburbs barred the aspiring residents, using a variety of methods. Middle-class whites in neighborhoods bordering black districts moved en masse to the suburbs, where newer housing was available. The spread of black people throughout urban Los Angeles was achieved in large part through blockbusting, a technique whereby real estate speculators would buy a home on an all-white street, sell or rent it to a black family, buy up the remaining homes from whites at cut-rate prices, then sell them to other black families at hefty profits.
The Rumford Fair Housing Act, designed to remedy residential segregation, was overturned by Proposition 14 in 1964, which was sponsored by the California real estate industry, and supported by a majority of white voters. Psychiatrist and civil rights activist Alvin Poussaint considered Proposition 14 to be one of the causes of black rebellion in Watts.
In 1950, William H. Parker was appointed and sworn in as Los Angeles chief of police. After a major scandal called Bloody Christmas of 1951, Parker pushed for more independence from political pressures that would enable him to create a more professionalized police force. The public supported him and voted for charter changes that isolated the police department from the rest of the city government.
Despite its reform and having a professionalized, military-like police force, William Parker's LAPD faced repeated criticism from the city's Latino and black residents for police brutality – resulting from his recruiting of officers from the South with strong anti-black and anti-Latino attitudes. Chief Parker coined the term "thin blue line", representing the police as holding down pervasive crime.
Resentment of such long-standing racial injustices is cited as a reason for the Watts Riots.
Inciting incident
On the evening of Wednesday, August 11, 1965, 21-year-old Marquette Frye, a black man driving his mother's 1955 Buick while drunk, was pulled over by California Highway Patrol rookie motorcycle officer Lee Minikus for alleged reckless driving. After Frye failed a field sobriety test, Minikus placed him under arrest and radioed for his vehicle to be impounded. Marquette's brother Ronald, a passenger in the vehicle, walked to their house nearby, bringing their mother Rena Price back with him to the scene of the arrest.
When Rena Price reached the intersection of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street that evening, she scolded Frye about drinking and driving as he recalled in a 1985 interview with the Orlando Sentinel. However, the situation quickly escalated: someone shoved Price, Frye was struck, Price jumped an officer, and another officer pulled out a shotgun. Backup police officers attempted to arrest Frye by using physical force to subdue him. After community members reported that police had roughed up Frye and shared a rumor they had kicked a pregnant woman, angry mobs formed. As the situation intensified, growing crowds of local residents watching the exchange began yelling and throwing objects at the police officers. Frye's mother and brother fought with the officers and eventually were arrested along with Marquette Frye.
After the arrests of Price and her sons, the crowd continued to grow along Avalon Boulevard. Police came to the scene to break up the crowd several times that night, but were attacked with rocks and chunks of concrete. A 46-square-mile (120 km2) swath of Los Angeles was transformed into a combat zone during the ensuing six days.
Riots begin
After a night of increasing unrest, police and local black community leaders held a community meeting on Thursday, August 12, to discuss an action plan and to urge calm. The meeting failed. Later that day, Chief Parker called for the assistance of the California Army National Guard. Chief Parker believed the riots resembled an insurgency, compared it to fighting the Viet Cong, and decreed a "paramilitary" response to the disorder. Governor Pat Brown declared that law enforcement was confronting "guerrillas fighting with gangsters".
The rioting intensified, and on Friday, August 13, about 2,300 National Guardsmen joined the police in trying to maintain order on the streets. Sergeant Ben Dunn said: "The streets of Watts resembled an all-out war zone in some far-off foreign country, it bore no resemblance to the United States of America." The first riot-related death occurred on the night of August 13, when a black civilian was killed in the crossfire during a shootout between the police and rioters. Over the next few days, rioting had then spread throughout other areas, including Pasadena, Pacoima, Monrovia, Long Beach, and even as far as San Diego, although they were very minor in comparison to Watts. About 200 Guardsmen and the LAPD were sent to assist the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) in controlling the unruly crowds.
By nightfall on Saturday, 16,000 law enforcement personnel had been mobilized and patrolled the city. Blockades were established, and warning signs were posted throughout the riot zones threatening the use of deadly force (one sign warned residents to "Turn left or get shot"). Angered over the police response, residents of Watts engaged in a full-scale battle against the first responders. Rioters tore up sidewalks and bricks to hurl at Guardsmen and police and smash their vehicles. Those actively participating in the riots started physical fights with police and blocked Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) firefighters from using fire hoses on protesters and burning buildings. Arson and looting were largely confined to local white-owned stores and businesses that were said to have caused resentment in the neighborhood due to low wages paid to workers and high prices.
To quell the riots, Chief Parker initiated a policy of mass arrest. Following the deployment of National Guardsmen, a curfew was declared for a vast region of South Central Los Angeles. In addition to the Guardsmen, 934 LAPD officers and 718 officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) were deployed during the rioting. Watts and all black-majority areas in Los Angeles were put under the curfew. All residents outside of their homes in the affected areas after 8:00 p.m. were subject to arrest. Eventually, nearly 3,500 people were arrested, primarily for curfew violations. By the morning of Sunday, August 15, the riots had largely been quelled.
Over the course of six days, between 31,000 and 35,000 adults participated in the riots, or in a curfew zone sample 15%. Around 70,000 people were "sympathetic, but not active.", or 31% in a curfew zone sample. Over the six days, there were 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and over $40 million in property damage. 769 buildings and businesses were damaged and looted and 208 buildings were completely destroyed. Fourteen public buildings were damaged and one was completely destroyed. Many white Americans were fearful of the breakdown of social order in Watts, especially since white motorists were being pulled over by rioters in nearby areas and assaulted. Many in the black community, however, believed the rioters were taking part in an "uprising against an oppressive system." In a 1966 essay, black civil rights activist Bayard Rustin wrote:
The whole point of the outbreak in Watts was that it marked the first major rebellion of Negroes against their own masochism and was carried on with the express purpose of asserting that they would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life.
Despite allegations that "criminal elements" were responsible for the riots, the vast majority of those arrested had no prior criminal record. Three sworn personnel were killed in the riots: a Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter was struck when a wall of a fire-weakened structure fell on him while fighting fires in a store, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was accidentally shot by another deputy while in a struggle with rioters, and a Long Beach Police Department officer was shot by another police officer during a scuffle with rioters. 23 out of the 34 people killed in the riots were shot by LAPD officers or National Guardsmen.
Public debate over causes of riots
Debate rose quickly over what had taken place in Watts, as the area was known to be under a great deal of racial and social tension. Reactions and reasoning about the riots greatly varied based on the perspectives of those affected by and participating in the riots.